I've known Alex Stamos for years; he is now a colleague of mine. There is no chance that he set out to deceive anyone with that post. If there were mistakes in his writeup, they were made in good faith. The whole case was complicated; read Swartz's motion to suppress evidence to see just a few of the twists and turns.

Stamos had nothing to gain from pushing a particular perspective. He was attached to the case as an expert witness and drew reasonable conclusions from the issues he was directly confronted with.

I get that the case is complex. But there's just no excuse for writing that "Aaron did nothing to cover his tracks or hide his activity". None at all. And if Stamos was willing to update his blog and explain that that statement is not true, I'll happily agree that he made a mistake while acting in good faith.

But until he does that, I think it is fair to assume that he either acted dishonestly with intent to deceive or that he's really incompetent.

Look, everyone makes mistakes. I do all the time. But when honest people make mistakes, they fix them. I'd be happy with a correction on his personal blog where I first saw the statement rather than io9. Just fix a single sentence.

But if Stamos refuses to fix that sentence which is glaringly wrong, then it indicates he either doesn't know the most basic facts of the case or he's trying to deceive people.